Tantras

by Scott Ciencin

  Jorah, Cabal, and Bursus stood staring at Kelemvor as he let out a deep, long growl and tore at his face with his fingers. Then they noticed that the fighter’s flesh was rippling. It was as if there were something inside him, struggling for release from his human skin. Kelemvor fell to his knees, threw his head back, and screamed once more as his chest burst apart and the paws of a sleek, black beast emerged.

  Kelemvor’s head seemed to collapse, and then the loose flesh tore open. Glowing green eyes and a gaping maw, filled with razor-sharp teeth, appeared visible as the head of the panther shook itself free from the glove of human flesh. In moments, all that remained of Kelemvor were a few bits of bloody flesh that soon dissolved. The fighter had moved to help Midnight with no reward in sight, and the curse had asserted itself.

  “Shut him up or kill him!” Yarbro shouted without turning around. The young guard had drawn a bead on Midnight’s head as she started to clamber up the southern bank. Anticipation rushed through Yarbro, and he reveled for a second in the knowledge that the fate of the sorceress was in his hands, that he was her judge, jury, and executioner. And the sentence is death, Yarbro thought as he steadied his arm and prepared to loose the deadly shaft.

  Suddenly an incredible, bestial roar sounded from behind him, and Yarbro started in surprise. Distracted, he released the arrow, and the shaft flew harmlessly over Midnight’s head. The young guard turned and saw the panther, and for a moment he believed that he had slipped into some kind of waking nightmare, that his lack of sleep was playing tricks with his mind. Still, his fellow huntsmen stood beside him and stared at the snarling beast with expressions of disbelief rivaling his own.

  Yarbro and Cabal were between the panther and the other dalesmen, who were now backing away nervously toward the north end of the bridge. Kelemvor was nowhere to be seen, the young guard realized, even though the fighter’s shredded clothing and discarded armor, stained with gore, lay in a pile just beyond the panther.

  Yarbro stared into the creature’s flaring, deep green eyes. They were so much like Kelemvor’s. At that moment, the young guard understood, impossible as it may have seemed, that Kelemvor and the panther were one and the same! Just as the creature sprang toward Cabal, the closest of the huntsmen, Yarbro leaped over the side of the bridge and plunged into the Ashaba to save himself.

  As the panther tore the aging archer apart, the man’s screams for mercy echoed around Blackfeather Bridge and over the Ashaba. The two remaining archers, Bursus and Jorah, raised their bows and moved forward. Mikkel, on the other hand, was frozen by fear and held his bow limply at his side. The panther looked up sharply from its bloody feast and bounded toward Bursus and Jorah, as if it sensed their deadly intent.

  Hands shaking, Jorah aimed and loosed his shaft. It flew high and scraped along the floor of the bridge until it came to a stop a hundred feet away. The slender, auburn-haired archer grabbed another arrow, but he never had a chance to fire it.

  Standing next to Jorah, Bursus steadied himself on his wounded leg and tried to remain calm as the sleek, powerful cat raced toward him. The black-eyed archer got the creature in his sights, aimed between its eyes, and released his shaft. The panther dodged to the right at the last possible instant, just before it sprang toward Jorah. The sleek beast bowled the archer over with its weight, then clamped its teeth upon Jorah’s throat.

  Bursus stared at the creature in horror as he backed away, reaching for another shaft. His hands shaking as if he had been struck by palsy, the black-eyed dalesman found an arrow just as the panther looked up from the dead man at its feet. The shaft rattled against its sight as Bursus stopped limping backward and readied himself to fire. Before Bursus could let fly another arrow, though, the panther roared again, and the dalesman saw blood and bits of flesh in its open maw. The sight paralyzed him with fear, and the moment of hesitation was all the beast needed as it sprang from Jorah’s corpse. The black-eyed archer saw the creature’s one huge claw raised above his eyes, and then his world went black.

  Toward the northern end of the bridge, Mikkel stumbled a few steps backward, away from the carnage. He was moving steadily, if slowly, away from the panther, his bow at his side. Still, he had only managed to travel a half dozen feet toward the end of the bridge when the panther turned and looked in his direction.

  The green-eyed monster shook with anticipation as it slowly padded toward the fisherman. Fear radiated from the dalesman, and the scent of his panic rankled the beast’s senses, filling it with an even greater rage.

  Mikkel dropped his bow and moved away from the weapon, toward the edge of the bridge. The panther’s gaze followed the red-skinned, bald fisherman as the dalesman’s sparkling prism earring caught the attention of the beast. The panther’s rage slowly melted away as it moved toward the shining object, its limited intellect lost in the multicolored display of light.

  Noting that the panther had slowed its movement toward him, Mikkel broke into a run and flung himself over the edge of the bridge. There was a last, sparkling burst of light from the prism earring, and then the man was gone. The panther raced to the edge of the bridge and put its front paws up on the railing to search for its prey, but the dalesman was gone, lost in the the raging flow of the river. The beast roared and settled back on all fours.

  In the trees beyond the south end of the bridge, Midnight and Adon felt a chill as they listened to the panther howling only a few dozen yards away from them. They sat huddled beneath a tree, scanning the water for signs of Cyric. As they listened, the panther’s cries turned from roars of anger to bellows of pain, and Midnight’s concern for their own survival and growing sorrow over Cyric’s apparent death were pushed into the background by her concern for Kelemvor. Waves of guilt rushed through her, filling her soul with a horrible sickness. The man who rescued me from the Twisted Tower is probably dead, and I’m more concerned about the lycanthropic mercenary who led the dalesmen’s hunt for me! the mage cursed silently.

  “Cyric,” Midnight whispered softly as she covered her face with her hands. “I let him die!” she said. “I should have saved him! I should have—”

  “Don’t punish yourself for being human,” Adon murmured quietly. “You did what you could.” The cleric put one arm around Midnight’s shoulder. On the bridge, the panther howled once more.

  “Kelemvor!” Midnight gasped. She pushed Adon away and struggled to her feet.

  The young cleric grabbed the mage’s arm and pulled her back to the ground. “Don’t go up there!” Adon wheezed. “We can’t face him while he’s in this state. There’s nothing we can do now but wait.”

  And so Midnight and Adon waited in the forest, shivering in their damp clothes. Although Midnight was wracked with guilt over the loss of Cyric and ached to ease Kelemvor’s pain, she knew that Adon was right. Sometimes events got out of control and there was nothing you could do, no way for you to help.

  There was nothing to do but wait for things to right themselves.

  If only I could make Adon appreciate the wisdom of his own words, Midnight thought as she turned toward the scarred cleric. Adon sat huddled against a rotting log, his eyes closed as if he were daydreaming. However, Midnight could guess from the pained expression on his face that, in his mind, he was watching Elminster’s death in the temple again. She thought of a dozen ways to start up a conversation with him, but she rejected them all as contrived or melodramatic.

  Finally she put her hand on the cleric’s shoulder. When he looked up at her, the mage smiled warmly and said, “Adon, you’ve got to stop punishing yourself for what happened in the Temple of Lathander!”

  Adon frowned and turned away. The cleric drew his knees up against his chest, then wrapped his arms around his legs. “You don’t know anything about it,” Adon mumbled as he rocked back and forth, his gaze fixed on the churning river.

  Midnight sighed and slumped down next to Adon. “We don’t know that the old sage died in that rift. Elminster might have saved himself,” the mage said as she ca
ressed the cleric’s back. “Lhaeo seemed convinced that his master was safe. That fact alone should give us hope.”

  When Adon didn’t react to Midnight’s words, the raven-haired mage put her hand under the cleric’s chin and forced him to look into her eyes. “Hope has to be enough for us, Adon—for both of us.” The panther roared again, and a tear welled in the corner of Midnight’s eye. “It’s all any of us really has left, isn’t it?”

  Adon gazed into Midnight’s eyes. “But Sune—”

  “I know,” Midnight said softly. “It’s hard to let go. When Mystra died—”

  Adon pushed Midnight away and leaped to his feet. “Sune isn’t dead!” the cleric snapped as he backed away from the mage.

  “I didn’t mean to imply that she was,” Midnight said with a sigh. The magic-user stood up and took Adon’s right hand in her own.

  “If anyone is dead, I am—in Sune’s eyes, at least,” Adon mumbled. He ran his hand over the scar that lined his face and winced. “I’ve become as accursed as Kelemvor. I have been forsaken for my deeds, and this horrible scar is my punishment.”

  “What deeds?” Midnight asked. “You’re one of the most faithful clerics I’ve ever known. What did you do wrong to deserve your scar?”

  Adon sighed and turned away from the mage. “I don’t know … but it must have been terrible!” The cleric put his hand over the scar and bowed his head. “This punishment is the worst thing Sune could visit upon me. I was once attractive, a credit to Sune. Now people cringe at my approach or ridicule me behind my back.”

  “I have never turned away from you, Adon,” Midnight said softly. “I have never mocked you. The scars on your flesh can be healed, and if Sune won’t have you, then perhaps she isn’t worth worshiping. Besides, it’s the scars that run beneath the flesh that concern me.”

  Above, the panther roared once again.

  Adon turned, anger flaring in his eyes. “We should be quiet,” the cleric growled. “We can’t afford to have Kelemvor hear us.”

  Midnight nodded. It was obvious that her comment about Sune had upset Adon, and she did not want to force the issue. Not yet, anyway. So they spent nearly an hour sitting in silence, listening to the sounds of the river and the panther on the bridge. Finally, when the yowls and roars had stopped and they were certain the creature had changed back into a man, Midnight and Adon broke from their cover and approached the bridge.

  The heroes felt their hearts sink as the scene of bloody carnage on the bridge was revealed to them. Kelemvor was lying on his stomach at the center of the bridge. He was naked, and his matted hair covered his face. Four badly mangled bodies lay nearby. Blood and bits of bodies stained long stretches of the bridge, as if several of the dead men had been dragged or tossed about by the animal Kelemvor had become.

  Images of the clerics whom Bane’s spies had slaughtered in the Temple of Tymora just before the Battle of Shadowdale returned to Adon, and he felt himself grow faint. However, the cleric fought back the nausea rising in his stomach and steeled himself for what he knew had to be done. The cleric wiped a thin film of sweat from his brow and moved to the first corpse. He grabbed the dead dalesman’s arm, dragged the body to the edge of the bridge, and let the corpse drop into the Ashaba.

  “To the sea our shattered bodies go, that our souls may take flight,” Adon whispered as Bursus’s body disappeared down the river. “May you find the peace you were denied in this world.”

  As Adon continued his bloody detail, Midnight dragged Kelemvor’s heavy armor close to the fighter’s side, then crouched down beside him. After a moment, she ran to the dalesmen’s camp and grabbed a blanket to throw over her former lover.

  “Don’t wake him,” Adon said as he dragged the second dalesman to the brink of the bridge. The cleric stopped for a moment and looked around. “Not until I’ve finished. It’ll be … better that way.”

  Midnight nodded, then pointed to the daggers that hung from the dalesman’s boots. “Take his weapons before you drop him into the river.”

  Adon gasped, and a look of extreme shock gripped his features. “I will not steal from the dead,” the cleric snapped.

  Midnight stood up and moved away from Kelemvor. “Take their weapons, Adon. We will have a greater need for them than the creatures that reside at the bottom of the river.”

  The cleric did not move. He just stood over the dalesman’s body, his mouth hanging slightly open. Midnight went to the remaining bodies and gathered their weapons herself. After the mage stripped each man of his weapons, Adon pronounced a final blessing on them and dropped the corpses into the Ashaba. Although he did not know if his words would hold any true value in the realm beyond the living, Adon knew that he would regret it if he didn’t even attempt a blessing.

  As the last of the dalesmen splashed into the river, Kelemvor began to stir.

  “Midnight!” Adon called from the end of the bridge, pointing to the fighter. The beautiful, dark-haired magic-user returned to Kelemvor’s side and placed her hand on his sweat-covered face. Instantly the fighter’s eyes flew open and he grabbed Midnight’s hand.

  Pain shot up the mage’s arm. “Kel!” Midnight cried and tried to wrench her arm from the fighter’s iron grip.

  Kelemvor looked shocked for a moment, then recognition slowly filtered into the fighter’s flashing green eyes. He relaxed his grip slightly, although he did not release his hold on the mage.

  “Midnight!” Kelemvor murmured, his lips trembling. “You’re alive!” The fighter’s grip loosened even more, and Midnight stopped struggling.

  “Yes, Kel,” Midnight said softly. The mage looked into the fighter’s eyes and saw pain and confusion.

  Kelemvor turned away from Midnight, squeezed his eyes shut, and brought her hand to his lips. “I made a terrible mistake. I almost hurt you.”

  Adon approached the fighter’s side. Midnight smiled and looked up at the cleric but said nothing.

  “Are they … dead?” Kelemvor asked, his face still turned away from Midnight, his eyes still closed. “Are they all dead?”

  “There were four bodies,” Adon said softly as he pulled the blanket over the fighter’s shoulders. “We saw two more men jump into the river during the battle.”

  Kelemvor opened his eyes once more and gazed at the cleric. “Adon,” the fighter said softly. “You survived, too. And Cyric?”

  Midnight shook her head. “He was lost in the river when the skiff capsized.”

  Raising himself on one arm, Kelemvor ran his hand through Midnight’s hair. “I’m … sorry,” he said flatly. Midnight turned to look at the fighter, but he was already standing up, surveying the bridge. Kelemvor saw the splatters of blood, the weapons gathered in a pile, and his own armor. Nothing else.

  “I’ll wager Yarbro escaped,” Kelemvor growled. “That one’ll be the death of us yet.”

  “He was the first one off the bridge,” Adon mumbled as he handed the fighter a shirt Midnight had taken from the dalesmen’s camp. “I saw him leap off just as I got to shore.”

  Kelemvor swore loudly. “He’ll either return to Essembra to gather reinforcements or ride on to Scardale to warn the town of our approach. Either way, it’ll mean trouble for us. The dalesmen wanted you, Cyric, and Adon dead, though Mourngrym ordered them to bring you back to the dale to receive your ‘just’ punishment.” Kelemvor paused and turned to Midnight. “Anyway, I’m sure that my name will now be added to the ranks of the guilty.”

  The fighter paused as he continued to dress himself. When he was done, he reached out and took Midnight’s face in both of his hands. “Why did you leave me behind in Shadowdale?”

  Midnight pulled away, anger suddenly overwhelming her. “Leave you! You turned Cyric down when he asked you to help rescue us!” The mage slapped the fighter’s hand away as he reached for her, then she moved to Adon’s side.

  A bitter laugh escaped Kelemvor’s lips. “Just what did Cyric tell you?”

  Midnight hesitated for a moment. Brushing the h
air out of her face, she relived the pain she felt when she first heard Kelemvor’s words of betrayal. “That you ‘couldn’t interfere with justice.’”

  Kelemvor nodded. “Cyric chose his words well, don’t you think? He knew you,” the fighter growled, turning away from his friends. “He knew just what to say to make you believe him.”

  “He was lying?” Midnight gasped. “You never said that?”

  “I said it before the trial,” the fighter mumbled and hung his head. “I thought you were going to be found innocent. If I’d have known, I would have found some way to help you escape.”

  Adon shook his head. “What do you mean? Didn’t you know about Cyric’s plan?”

  Kelemvor whirled around, anger flashing in his eyes. “By all the souls in Myrkul’s Realm, what do you think I’m saying?” The fighter took a deep breath. “Cyric never told me about the escape. I found out the next day … when the bodies started to appear.”

  Midnight and Adon looked at each other, shock in their eyes. “What bodies?” Midnight asked. A dark, creeping fear was moving across her soul. Even before Kelemvor told her about the murdered guardsmen, she knew that Cyric had not told her everything about his plan.

  Kelemvor studied Midnight’s face for a reaction as he told her about the bloody trail of corpses he and Mourngrym had traced through the Twisted Tower. The fighter hoped that the mage would not be able to hide her guilt if confronted directly with the murders. As he told her of the crimes, the mage blanched, and her eyes revealed surprise and horror.

  “I—I didn’t know,” Midnight stammered and looked again to Adon. The cleric was frowning deeply, and his eyes reflected the fury he felt.